142. Capitals and Minuscules
The distinction between capitals and “small” letters is one which we learn so early in life that we are wont to take it as something self-evident and natural. Yet it is a late addition in the history of the alphabet. Greeks and Romans knew nothing of it. They wrote wholly in what we should call capital letters. If they wanted a title or heading to stand out, they made the letters larger, but not different in form. The same is done to-day in Hebrew and Arabic, and in fact in all alphabets except those of Europe.
Our own two kinds or fonts of letters, the capital and “lower case” or “minuscule,” are more different than we ordinarily realize. We have seen them both so often in the same words that we are likely to forget that the “A” differs even more in form than in size from “a,” and that “b” has wholly lost the upper of the two loops which mark “B.” In late Imperial Roman times the original “capital” forms of the letters were retained for inscriptional purposes, but in ordinary writing changes began to creep in. These modifications increased in the Middle Ages, giving rise first to the “Uncial” and then to the “Minuscule” forms of the letters. Both represent a cursive rather than a formal script. The minuscules are essentially the modern “small” letters. But when they first developed, people wrote wholly in them, reserving the older formal capitals for chapter initials. Later, the capitals crept out of their temporary rarity and came to head paragraphs, sentences, proper names, and in fact all words that seemed important. Even as late as a few centuries ago, every English noun was written and printed with a capital letter, as it still is in German. Of course little or nothing was gained by this procedure. In many sentences the significant word must be a verb or adjective; and yet, according to the arbitrary old rule, it was the noun that was made to stand out.
To-day we still feel it necessary in English to retain capitals for proper names. It is certain that a suggestion to commence these also with small letters would be met with the objection that a loss of clearness would be entailed. As a matter of fact, the cases in which ambiguity between a common and proper noun might ensue would be exceedingly few; the occasional inconvenience so caused would be more than compensated for by increased simplicity of writing and printing. Every child would learn its letters in little more than half the time that it requires now. The printer would be able to operate with half as many characters, and typewriting machines could dispense with a shift key. French and Spanish designate proper adjectives without capitals and encounter no misunderstanding, and all English telegrams are sent in a code that makes no distinction. When we read the newspaper in the morning and think that the mixture of capital and small letters is necessary for our easy comprehension of the page, we forget that this same news came over the wire without capitals.